Ciambellone cocco e cioccolato – chocolate & coconut cake

Recipe 64: Last weekend was the birthday of a friend coming form Italy and i couldn’t let him down without a birthday cake… so we organized a quick dinner in my house. The problem was that on sunday the majority of the supermarkets here in London close early, so i had to do my shopping in an express one… this means there was nothing! I just saw some coconut powder and this was the cake.

Ingredients: 200 gr of dark chocolate, 300gr flour, 170gr grated coconut, 250gr sugar, 150gr butter, 3 eggs, 1/2 cup of milk, some baking powder and half of a vanilla pod. Choose a big baking pan because the mix will be quite a lot and the cake will also grow a lot in the oven.

Put in a little sauce pan the chocolate and melt it on a low fire. To avoid the chocolate from burn, you can put this pan in a bigger pan with boiling water. In this way the chocolate will melt for the hot from the water without burn or stick to the pan. In the meantime mix the 3 eggs and the sugar until they create a yellow cream.

Put the half cup of milk in the microwave and let it become hot. Then open the half vanilla pod and leave it in the hot milk to release all the flavor. When the chocolate is all melted, add the butter and let melt this too in the same way.

When the chocolate and butter are melted leave it to cool down. In the meantime add in the mixed the flour, the milk with vanilla, the coconut powder, a spoon of baking powder and finally the chocolate and butter.
Mix it all very well and don’t worry about the clots because these are created by the coconut powder, but it’s not a problem.

Choose the baking pan and cover it with butter and flour or just baking paper like i did. Add the mix of ingredients and put it in the oven at 180-200 degree for 1 hour! Here is the result! On top spread some icing sugar or coconut powder if you still have it and serve it with some ice cream or just whipped cream.

As for the whipped cream, we couldn’t find not even the candles in the express market, so just pure Ciambellone cocco e cioccolato and the only candle i had at home! However the birthday guy was happy and liked the cake… that’s the most important!